HOW IT WORKS

The Common Good.
A public sector whose benefits and responsibilities are shared by all, and directed by the consent of the governed

FLASHBACK to Hurricane Katrina: The Perfect Storm

But as culpable, criminal and loathsome as the Bush Administration is, it is only the apotheosis of an overarching trend in American society that has been gathering force for decades: the destruction of the idea of a common good, a public sector whose benefits and responsibilities are shared by all, and directed by the consent of the governed.

For more than 30 years, the corporate Right has waged a relentless and highly focused campaign against the common good, seeking to atomize individuals into isolated "consumer units" whose political energies - kept deliberately underinformed by the ubiquitous corporate media - can be diverted into emotionalized "hot button" issues (gay marriage, school prayer, intelligent design, flag burning, welfare queens, drugs, porn, abortion, teen sex, commie subversion, terrorist threats, etc., etc.) that never threaten Big Money's bottom line.

SELF CENSORSHIP

Our own worst enemy - Sherry Jones

Self-censorship doesn’t just hurt writers. It hurts readers most of all, and it hurts our ability to grow and progress by limiting the exchange of ideas.
The same is true for The Cartoons That Shook the World. In it, Klausen makes a strong case that the controversial cartoons published by Jyllands-Posten in 2005 weren’t the real cause of the ensuing protests and riots, but were merely a tool used by governments and extremist groups to stir up anti-Western sentiment. As I read her book, which describes the 12 drawings, I yearned to see them. I wanted to decide for myself how offensive they were. I also wanted to see the uncontroversial artworks portraying Muhammad the author describes – evidence, Klausen states, that depicting the Prophet has never been taboo. Without a laptop by my side, I was cheated out of this educational opportunity by Yale University Press’s censors.

What’s also disturbing is the relative lack of attention paid to Yale’s censorious act. Are we becoming numb to these losses of our freedoms? When we read of the German publisher Droste Verlag’s recent cancellation of an honour-killing murder mystery, again out of fear of Islamist retaliation despite the absence of threats, do we still feel angry? Or do we shrug in resignation? Do we know about this latest incident at all? Several days after the story hit the German press, I saw no mention in the US media.

SECRETS AND LIES

Saving Private Manning

Private First Class Bradley Manning, is the person being held in detention at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, for allegedly releasing 260,000 confidential US government cables to WikiLeaks.
Reports confirm that he is being held in solitary confinement; that he only has one hour outside his cell a day; is on suicide watch and has no access to news.

The problem with any US “investigation” - for which “witch hunt” may be a more accurate description - is the patterns of behaviour to be found in recent American history.

There is a record of secret support for less than salubrious regimes with undeclared involvement for example in the overthrow of Chilean president Allende, secret support for drug running Panamanian president General Noriega, the corrupt Marcos family in the Phillipines, Ngo Dinh Diem, General Thieu and Air Vice Marshall Ky in South Vietnam and more recently Karzai in Afghanistan.
A further quick sampling would highlight the McCarthy witch hunt of “communists” in the 1950s, the Gulf of Tonkin incident staged to justify the war in Vietnam, the invasion of Afghanistan that hinged on blaming the government for 9/11, and assertions about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” to justify the invasion of Iraq.

SECRETS AND LIES

Saving Private Manning

Private First Class Bradley Manning, is the person being held in detention at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, for allegedly releasing 260,000 confidential US government cables to WikiLeaks.
Reports confirm that he is being held in solitary confinement; that he only has one hour outside his cell a day; is on suicide watch and has no access to news.

The problem with any US “investigation” like this - for which “witch hunt” may be a more accurate description - is the patterns of behaviour to be found in recent American history.

There is a record of secret support for less than salubrious regimes with undeclared involvement for example in the overthrow of Chilean president Allende, secret support for drug running Panamanian president General Noriega, the corrupt Marcos family in the Phillipines, Ngo Dinh Diem, General Thieu and Air Vice Marshall Ky in South Vietnam and more recently Karzai in Afghanistan.
A further quick sampling would highlight the McCarthy witch hunt of “communists” in the 1950s, the Gulf of Tonkin incident staged to justify the war in Vietnam, the invasion of Afghanistan that hinged on blaming the government for 9/11, and assertions about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” to justify the invasion of Iraq.

EARTH CHANGES

Golfballs the new hail
Georgia Shield holds several of the golf ball-size hailstones that fell at Logan, south of Brisbane, during a freak storm on the afternoon of December 15, 2010.

LEAKS & GEEKS

Who is Julian Assange?

The super-geek who is now staking a claim to being the world's most notorious leaker of secrets grew up on a small idyllic Queensland island with just 500 residents - a "Tom Sawyer" who fished and built rafts while his mother "lived in a bikini" and shot a taipan on his bed.

Born in July 1971 in Townsville on the Queensland coast, Julian Assange says he's never been a stranger to the nomadic way of life, moving 37 times by the time he was 14. His parents worked in theatre and were often on the road.

He and his half-brother did not receive formal education, with his mother Christine telling The New Yorker magazine in June: "I didn't want their spirits broken."

FIRST CASUALTY

 

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Don't shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths

IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Assange “rape” accuser has CIA ties

Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden has a significant history of work with anti-Castro groups, at least one of which is US funded and openly supported by a former CIA (Quelle surprise, no?) agent convicted in the mass murder of seventy three Cubans on an airliner he was involved in blowing up.

WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange's rape case gets murkier

Are the sexual assault charges against Julian Assange really true or is he being framed? As more details surface, the case gets murkier by the minute. Assange is currently in a London jail cell awaiting deportation to Sweden on charges he sexually assaulted two women there in August.

EARTH CHANGES

Eiffel Tower shut and roads blocked by Paris snowfall

Heavy snow in Paris brought buses to a halt on Wednesday, suspended flights at Charles de Gaulle airport and prompted the closure of the Eiffel Tower.Motorways in the Paris region were described as impassable as snow that had already hit other areas of France spread to the capital.

Panama Canal shut by heavy rains

Traffic through the Panama Canal - which connects the Pacific and Atlantic oceans - has been temporarily suspended because of heavy rain.The canal authority said the rains had pushed water levels in lakes that form part of the canal to historic highs, potentially affecting shipping.It is the first time the canal has had to close since the US invasion of Panama in 1989.

TWINKLE TWINKLE

'Diamond exoplanet' idea boosted by telescope find

A US-British team of astronomers has discovered the first planet with ultra-high concentrations of carbon.

The researchers say their discovery supports the idea there may be carbon-rich, rocky planets whose terrains are made up of diamonds or graphite.
"You might see land masses and mountains made up of diamonds," the lead researcher Dr Nikku Madhusudhan told BBC News.
The study in Nature journal raises new questions about how planets are formed.